SAN FRANCISCO—Google's Android operating system might be free, but it makes plenty of money off the system—and some of that cash ought to be headed to Oracle. At least that's what the database company's lawyer told a jury today. "You can't just step on somebody's intellectual property because you have a good business reason for it," said Michael Jacobs, an Oracle lawyer.

One of the biggest tech-industry legal disputes has moved to trial now in San Francisco, where a panel of 12 men and women was sworn in to hear eight weeks of testimony about whether Google violated copyright and patent laws when it created its Android operating system. Jacobs told jurors that Google was so eager to see Android take off, it was willing to charge ahead without getting a license from Sun—even though top Google execs knew it needed one. (Java was created by Sun Microsystems, which was purchased by Oracle a few years ago.)

Google hasn't had a chance to respond yet; its lawyers are scheduled to give an opening statement tomorrow morning.

This trial is the culmination of a case first filed almost two years ago. Over that time, it has morphed from a case mostly about patents to one that's mainly about copyright. That's in part because five of the seven patents Oracle originally asserted have been tossed out of the lawsuit. At one point, Oracle filed damage reports suggesting it would ask for up to $6 billion in damages; that's been whittled down greatly. The sides still have conflicting damage reports, but numbers presented to the jury are likely to be in the tens of millions, not the billions.

Opening statement

"This isn't the kind of property we're used to," Jacobs told the jury. "It's intellectual property, which fuels our economy, and is the backstop for the R&D that great companies engage in."

After that brief explication, Jacobs wasted no time in showing jurors an e-mail from Google engineer Tim Lindholm to Andy Rubin, the head of Android. That message has been the subject of contentious litigation already, and Google lawyers tried, unsuccessfully, to keep it out of court. It reads in part:

"What we've actually been asked to do (by Larry and Sergei) is to investigate what technical alternatives exist to java for android and chrome. we've been over a bunch of these, and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java under the terms we need."

It was the first of many e-mails Oracle presented that show Google knew it needed a license for Android, but just blew it off. "This was not a mistake, this was not inadvertence," said Jacobs. "The decision to use Oracle intellectual property in Android was done at the highest levels of Google with consciousness and awareness of what's going on."

(Google has argued that the Lindholm e-mail is simply a strategic discussion of what to do, which was only initiated after Oracle filed suit.)

In the lawsuit, Oracle isn't claiming that a license is needed to use the Java programming language, but it does say a license is needed for anyone using a Java application programming interface, or API. Google, meanwhile, maintains that neither the Java programming language nor the Java APIs are even subject to copyright.

Just because Google doesn't charge for Android doesn't mean it isn't big business, said Jacobs. It makes its money the same way Google does from Web search—via advertising.

"So this is Google's pitch: we don't make money off of Android. We give it away for free to the world, and they put it on their cell phones and tablets," said Jacobs. "But this is business. And in fact, Android is hugely profitable for Google."

Google wanted to base its system on Java because it knew it needed an active developer community to design the apps that would make Android take off. Google believed that leveraging Java—with its community of six million developers worldwide—was the way to go.

At one point, Jacobs acknowledged that there's precious little evidence of actual copying in the case. The allegation is that it's the design of Java APIs that Google emulated. Still, he did show a few lines of code to the jury that Google is alleged to have copied "line for line" from Java code. "It's not a lot, but copying is copying," said Jacobs. Building Android "was not done in a clean room. It was not done without looking at Sun's stuff."

The jury

Only jurors who were prepared to sit for an eight-week trial even came to court; they were pre-screened with written questionnaires. Forty-four prospective jurors filed into court shortly after 8:00 am, but only about 20 of those were ultimately questioned. Judge William Alsup warned jurors not to look at any press coverage of the case, and not to talk about it with friends and family—standard orders for a jury, but more significant in a high-profile case like this one.

"You may not look at any website, blog, no TV item, or radio item," Alsup said. "The case must be decided on the evidence at trial, not what some newspaper person is saying."

The pool of jurors that was questioned included two computer engineers, each with more than 20 years of experience—one who worked for Cisco and another who worked for Hewlett-Packard. The HP engineer, when asked about her hobbies, said she enjoys creating smartphone apps in her free time. Both had involvement with their respective companies' patent work, and the Cisco engineer said he was heavily involved in a patent lawsuit Cisco is currently defending.

During questioning by the judge, the Cisco engineer expressed skepticism about software patents, saying: "My opinion is that patent lawyers write those so vaguely it's hard to argue them one way or another." Ultimately, both engineers acknowledged they would have a hard time separating the evidence at trial from their own extensive work in the tech industry. They were dismissed by the judge.

Two other prospective jurors were attorneys; one an in-house insurance lawyer, and another was actually a patent lawyer who works in Silicon Valley (mostly dealing with biomedical technology). Both were struck from the final panel by Oracle and Google lawyers—each side was allowed to strike three jurors in total. (Oracle struck the insurance lawyer, while the patent lawyer was knocked out by Google.)

At one point, prospective jurors were asked what kind of cell phones they used. About half raised their hand to indicate they use smartphones, while the other half had feature phones. Only one of the jurors (who is on the final panel) uses an Android phone.

The jury as finally selected is seven women and five men with a range of backgrounds. The panel includes a retired photographer, a woman who works for The Gap, a secretary with the EPA, an SF Muni bus driver, a plumber, a financial adviser, and a letter carrier for the Postal Service. Because it's a federal jury, the juries come from throughout the Northern District. This includes the entire San Francisco Bay Area and some counties further to the north.

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Knowledge is the first and greatest enemy to all legal actions.

It can also introduce bias. Not that I completely agree with the exclusion of them, the ideal jury is one with no vested interest in the outcome. If your an android app developer, you might not want them to be found guilty since that could impact your ability to sell your product.

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Knowledge is the first and greatest enemy to all legal actions.

It can also introduce bias. Not that I completely agree with the exclusion of them, the ideal jury is one with no vested interest in the outcome. If your an android app developer, you might not want them to be found guilty since that could impact your ability to sell your product.

However, where it involves technical knowledge, then either the court instructs both sides to "dumb it down" for the layman or they'll need to revise their selection process just a tad bit to not discredit anyone with "some" knowledge. You can have some technical knowledge (enough, but not enough to impact the case) without bias.

Asking someone who don't even know what a PC is - you may as well get chimpanzees and parakeets on your jury panel.

The copyright decision may end up being very important, but the common tech blogosphere sentiment

Quote:

One of the biggest tech-industry legal disputes has moved to trial

is kind of annoying because of

Quote:

At one point, Oracle filed damage reports suggesting it would ask for up to $6 billion in damages; that's been whittled down greatly. The sides still have conflicting damage reports, but numbers presented to the jury are likely to be in the tens of millions, not the billions.

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Yeah, number one reason why I would never want to be on jury, and probably why I never get selected either because I ask too many questions.

Xipher wrote:

UltimateLemon wrote:

Control Group wrote:

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Knowledge is the first and greatest enemy to all legal actions.

It can also introduce bias. Not that I completely agree with the exclusion of them, the ideal jury is one with no vested interest in the outcome. If your an android app developer, you might not want them to be found guilty since that could impact your ability to sell your product.

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Yeah, number one reason why I would never want to be on jury, and probably why I never get selected either because I ask too many questions.

Xipher wrote:

UltimateLemon wrote:

Control Group wrote:

While I understand the reasons, it is always fascinating to me that the first step in jury selection is almost always "eliminate anyone with any working knowledge of the subject matter."

Knowledge is the first and greatest enemy to all legal actions.

It can also introduce bias. Not that I completely agree with the exclusion of them, the ideal jury is one with no vested interest in the outcome. If your an android app developer, you might not want them to be found guilty since that could impact your ability to sell your product.

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

In the trial jurors will hear all the arguments about what happened. A fair trial is not supposed to contain jurors who already know how they'll decide. An unbiased juror has few set opinions and prejudices about the matter, and comes to a decision based only on the evidence, facts, and testimony actually presented during the trial.

It can also introduce bias. Not that I completely agree with the exclusion of them, the ideal jury is one with no vested interest in the outcome. If your an android app developer, you might not want them to be found guilty since that could impact your ability to sell your product.

Interesting historical point, the original intent of the jury was that the jury would have intimate knowledge of the subject. That is why the word peers is in the "right to be judged by a jury of peers". Objective and uninterested people are not peers.

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

What a load of nonsense. Both companies have a lot of cool stuff, but then Oracle is heavy on lawyers these days and Google is really light on privacy. But both are nowhere near your level of description.

It is laughable! Select the most ignorant, perhaps least interested parties to decide a case! Whose idea was that this must be a sound scheme for deciding issues! At least they haven't mandated the same approach to be applied to other disciplines yet.

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

In the trial jurors will hear all the arguments about what happened. A fair trial is not supposed to contain jurors who already know how they'll decide. An unbiased juror has few set opinions and prejudices about the matter, and comes to a decision based only on the evidence, facts, and testimony actually presented during the trial.

Do you really believe that? What happens when one has no clue what the subject matter is, that one frantically forms an 'opinion' there and then. Depending on one's capacity and methodology to handle complex information - lots of it - in a short time, one may not be able to form any solid, consistent or logical opinion about anything. Infact, it is quite likely that the last argument, if it is even half convincing, will sway one's 'opinion' as that is likely to be the only one remaining in one's head.!

That is essentially how an ignorant jury would end up deciding!

One would really think that in order to do justice, the quest should be to at least find people of above-average intelligence with a demonstrated track record of having been fair in their dealings and practices in their daily lives.

Can you imagine Oracle setting the precedent that computer languages and APIs can be put under copyright.

And that is the beauty of this case. If Oracle wins they lose and if they lose they lose. All because of a case they brought themselves.

If they win and set the precedent that you can copyright API's and languages you will have companies abandoning proprietary programming languages left right and center for fear that some one will decide to try a get rich quick scheme. Oracle has already proven that they are willing to shake down companies. At that point Java is pretty well over. Big FOSS win.

Then I am sure some one will come knocking for some graft for things Sun/Oracle may have liberated in order create Java. <cough>C++<cough>.

On the other hand they have already lost some of what were supposed to be their best patents which were ground into the dirt by the USPTO. At the end of this a lot of their supposed control over Java could be greatly weakened as well. An interesting case.

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

In the trial jurors will hear all the arguments about what happened. A fair trial is not supposed to contain jurors who already know how they'll decide. An unbiased juror has few set opinions and prejudices about the matter, and comes to a decision based only on the evidence, facts, and testimony actually presented during the trial.

Do you really believe that? What happens when one has no clue what the subject matter is, that one frantically forms an 'opinion' there and then. Depending on one's capacity and methodology to handle complex information - lots of it - in a short time, one may not be able to form any solid, consistent or logical opinion about anything. Infact, it is quite likely that the last argument, if it is even half convincing, will sway one's 'opinion' as that is likely to be the only one remaining in one's head.!

That is essentially how an ignorant jury would end up deciding!

One would really think that in order to do justice, the quest should be to at least find people of above-average intelligence with a demonstrated track record of having been fair in their dealings and practices in their daily lives.

Ignorant juror will side with the more articulate lawyer, or simply with the lawyer they like better. And naturally most will attempt to hide this and will pretend that they understand the subject matter.

At one time or another we've all gone toe to toe with a co-worker regarding some technology strategy, until the non-technical manager stepped in and made the decision for us. How did that work out for ya? Manager sided with the employee who made their case more compelling, or with the employee the manager had a closer personal relationship with. Facts have fuck-all to do with anything when the decision maker doesn't understand them.

The existing juror system is fine when working with classic crimes of murder assault theft etc.....

A software patent dispute? No way. There isn't going to be an informed decision made.

OK, but how can you decide an outcome of a case if you have no idea what actually happened?

In the trial jurors will hear all the arguments about what happened. A fair trial is not supposed to contain jurors who already know how they'll decide. An unbiased juror has few set opinions and prejudices about the matter, and comes to a decision based only on the evidence, facts, and testimony actually presented during the trial.

Do you really believe that? What happens when one has no clue what the subject matter is, that one frantically forms an 'opinion' there and then. Depending on one's capacity and methodology to handle complex information - lots of it - in a short time, one may not be able to form any solid, consistent or logical opinion about anything. Infact, it is quite likely that the last argument, if it is even half convincing, will sway one's 'opinion' as that is likely to be the only one remaining in one's head.!

That is essentially how an ignorant jury would end up deciding!

One would really think that in order to do justice, the quest should be to at least find people of above-average intelligence with a demonstrated track record of having been fair in their dealings and practices in their daily lives.

Ignorant juror will side with the more articulate lawyer, or simply with the lawyer they like better. And naturally most will attempt to hide this and will pretend that they understand the subject matter.

At one time or another we've all gone toe to toe with a co-worker regarding some technology strategy, until the non-technical manager stepped in and made the decision for us. How did that work out for ya? Manager sided with the employee who made their case more compelling, or with the employee the manager had a closer personal relationship with. Facts have fuck-all to do with anything when the decision maker doesn't understand them.

The existing juror system is fine when working with classic crimes of murder assault theft etc.....

A software patent dispute? No way. There isn't going to be an informed decision made.

Actually it is. It's presented in a way that makes sense to the jurors. Lawyers and prosecutors have had decades of experience explaining blood stains and ballistics and body decomposition, and a couple of decades explaining DNA. Besides doesn't everyone alive today know at least a little bit about what forensics is about?

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

What a load of nonsense. Both companies have a lot of cool stuff, but then Oracle is heavy on lawyers these days and Google is really light on privacy. But both are nowhere near your level of description.

I see you've never seen an Oracle product in production.... I have and I want to punch Oracle devs in the face.

Or thought about the full ramifications of Google's data mining efforts. Can you visualize petabytes of data... and somewhere in there there's a database row just for you. And any corporation can pay google to access that information? It's fricken creepy. Real world equivalent to what they are doing is called stalking.

You guys do realize that their is a judge in the room, right? One of the duties of the judge is to make sure that the jury gets it right. If, for instance, all the evidence points to an Oracle win, and the jury finds for Google, the judge can set aside the verdict. While you are entitled to a jury of your peers, that does not pre-empt the right to a just trial. The jury get to vote, as long as they aren't completely wrong, hence saving you from ignorance. Now if the issue is close, well, then likely it could go either way no matter how educated the jury is.

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

What a load of nonsense. Both companies have a lot of cool stuff, but then Oracle is heavy on lawyers these days and Google is really light on privacy. But both are nowhere near your level of description.

I see you've never seen an Oracle product in production.... I have and I want to punch Oracle devs in the face.

Or thought about the full ramifications of Google's data mining efforts. Can you visualize petabytes of data... and somewhere in there there's a database row just for you. And any corporation can pay google to access that information? It's fricken creepy. Real world equivalent to what they are doing is called stalking.

Regarding the data Google collects. Do they actually sell such data or just use it internally to sell targeted ads? Is there proof of this somewhere? Because I know Facebook does that but I was under the impression that Google only used the data to sell ads.

Just for once I want to see a tech case where the Jury is compromised of College Educated professionals working in the same industry that is at the heart of the case.

I myself have a BS in IS and would love to be on the jury on a case involving any number of Enterprise security concerns. However I bet the lawyers would be like "Holy Shit! He knows stuff, get rid of him!"

whats the bets the judge and jury wouldnt understand a line of the code the argument is about and would therefore not have a clue if an infringement is valid. I just do not understand how 12 people forced on pain of time in jail can be trusted to decide wether google is guilty of anything. I mean how much time has the judge spent learning computer programming or any of the jury if the answer is 0 then that is what this trial is worth.

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

What a load of nonsense. Both companies have a lot of cool stuff, but then Oracle is heavy on lawyers these days and Google is really light on privacy. But both are nowhere near your level of description.

I see you've never seen an Oracle product in production.... I have and I want to punch Oracle devs in the face.

Or thought about the full ramifications of Google's data mining efforts. Can you visualize petabytes of data... and somewhere in there there's a database row just for you. And any corporation can pay google to access that information? It's fricken creepy. Real world equivalent to what they are doing is called stalking.

Regarding the data Google collects. Do they actually sell such data or just use it internally to sell targeted ads? Is there proof of this somewhere? Because I know Facebook does that but I was under the impression that Google only used the data to sell ads.

They collect data, know what you like and don't like, and then put up ads that are relevant to you without telling those companies anything about you. They have never sold any info to companies directly.

I don't care who's in the right, if anyone. It will be fun to see one of them bitchslapped.... I don't care which one.

Google was once cool. Nowadays they are well on their way to turning into the Evil Galactic Empire. (We are somewhere half way into Episode 3: ROTS.) I don't use them anymore for anything - not even the search.

Oracle OTOH have placed themselves in the Enterprise market through vendor lock-in and marketing - NOT through inovation. Their products suck ass, but are politically appealing so time after time CIOs choose them over the competition. Oracle. Shudder. It's like there's a competition between their devs on which one is going to ignore the most common practices. FFS!

What a load of nonsense. Both companies have a lot of cool stuff, but then Oracle is heavy on lawyers these days and Google is really light on privacy. But both are nowhere near your level of description.

I see you've never seen an Oracle product in production.... I have and I want to punch Oracle devs in the face.

Or thought about the full ramifications of Google's data mining efforts. Can you visualize petabytes of data... and somewhere in there there's a database row just for you. And any corporation can pay google to access that information? It's fricken creepy. Real world equivalent to what they are doing is called stalking.

Regarding the data Google collects. Do they actually sell such data or just use it internally to sell targeted ads? Is there proof of this somewhere? Because I know Facebook does that but I was under the impression that Google only used the data to sell ads.

They collect data, know what you like and don't like, and then put up ads that are relevant to you without telling those companies anything about you. They have never sold any info to companies directly.

Well then, they are better than most of the companies out there collecting data. I can always block the ads.